A study of the relationship of external funding to medical school faculty success

This quantitative study examines the relationship between external funding and success among faculty at one major U.S. medical school, Duke University Medical School. External funding is defined as the amount and predominant type of non-clinical revenue in faculty controlled accounts. The success indicators are defined as productivity measures, including the numbers of grant awards, NIH awards, publications and citations. Success indicators are also defined as reward measures including tenure, promotion, academic awards, and base salary increase. Descriptive statistics and multiple and logistic regression are used to examine the relationship between external funding and faculty productivity and rewards after controlling for other variables such as sex, race, degree type, faculty rank, years as faculty, administrative and clinical duties.;Results of the analyses indicate that external revenue is highly correlated to all productivity measures and academic awards for the clinical science faculty. External revenue is correlated to some productivity measures but shows no relationship to reward measures for the basic science faculty. Promotion and tenure are not related to external funding for either the clinical or basic science faculty despite its importance to the organizational success as a whole.